Heat on Hathaway

The Secretary of the Interior is in effect the nation's land lord, the overseer of the 540 million acres that the Government holds in trust for the people. The post has become increasingly important as environment and energy have grown into major and often conflicting American concerns. It is the Interior Secretary who decides how to develop federal resources with the least ecological damage--especially the needed oil, coal and shale-oil reserves on public lands. President Gerald Ford recently picked a new Secretary: Stanley K. Hathaway, 50, the former Republican Governor of Wyoming, who immediately ran into so much flak that he must have thought he was back in World War II, when he served on a B-17 bomber.

During a month-long marathon, Hathaway was repeatedly grilled by the Senate Interior Committee. Even when he was finally approved last week in a 9-to-4 vote, questions lingered about whether he was the right man for the job.

Ford chose him for sound, practical reasons. The post traditionally goes to a Westerner: Hathaway was born on a homestead, worked his way up to become first a successful lawyer and then the most popular governor in Wyoming's history. He is also conservative enough to help mend Ford's political fences with the G.O.P.'s right wing. Beyond that, Hathaway, though somewhat stolid, is a proven administrator capable of running a 56,000-person department.

Hathaway's problem was that in his two terms as Wyoming's Governor, he too often neglected environmental problems. Instead he concentrated on boosting the state's economy and creating new jobs by developing its vast natural resources. He encouraged oil drillers, leased coal-mining rights to an additional 1.2 million acres of state-owned land and did his best to supply the new energy industries with scarce water supplies.

Heedless Growth. Wyoming prospered--but at a price. Crash industrial development has produced heedless, disorderly growth in such once quiet towns as Rock Springs and Gillette. Poorly controlled strip mining for coal threatens to ravage the ranch lands in the Powder River Basin. Hathaway also condoned the killing of golden eagles and favored building a jetport in Grand Teton National Park. Neither is a happy precedent, since the Interior Secretary is responsible for protecting U.S. wildlife and the national parks. Some 20 environmental groups were aghast at this record and immediately protested Hathaway's Cabinet nomination.

The committee seemed willing to forget the past--the man could, after all, change in the job--until the environmentalists found a serious flaw in Hathaway's case. His backers had widely distributed to Congress and the press a document listing the Governor's environmental accomplishments back home. Embarrassingly, of 23 such "achievements," the private Environmental Defense Fund discovered that most had either been forced on Wyoming by the Federal Government or were actually designed to weaken existing laws. Supporters of Hathaway also claimed that 49 Governors backed his nomination; under scrutiny, only 35 such endorsements turned up.

Serious Handicap. After being thus misled, the Senators probed more deeply into issues on which the next Interior Secretary would have to take a stand. In case after case, Hathaway committed himself to proenvironment positions, including some that ran counter to Ford Administration policies. He endorsed, for instance, environmental safeguards that would surely delay Ford's timetable for quick development of offshore oil reserves. He favored a national land-use bill that the President has called too costly. Most startlingly, Hathaway pledged to follow "the intent" of the strip-mining bill that Ford vetoed last week; even if the veto stands, he explained, "I would come as close to the [bill's tough environmental] standards as I could" when the Interior Department writes new leases with coal companies.

Hathaway's concessions swayed the Interior Committee; its support virtually guarantees his confirmation by the full Senate in June. But he will start his job with a serious handicap: environmentalists are sure to keep a skeptical eye on Hathaway, ready to pounce on him if he makes a wrong move.

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